Celine and Julie Go Boating
| Céline and Julie Go Boating: Phantom Ladies Over Paris | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Jacques Rivette |
| Produced by | Barbet Schroeder |
| Written by | Jacques Rivette Dominique Labourier Juliet Berto Eduardo de Gregorio Bulle Ogier Marie-France Pisier, including sections based on original stories by Henry James. |
| Starring |
Dominique Labourier Juliet Berto Marie-France Pisier |
| Music by | Jean-Marie Senia |
| Cinematography | Jacques Renard |
| Edited by | Nicole Lubtchansky |
| Distributed by | Films du Losange |
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Release date
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Running time
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192 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Céline and Julie Go Boating (French: Céline et Julie vont en bateau) is a 1974 French film directed by Jacques Rivette. The film stars Dominique Labourier as Julie and Juliet Berto as Céline.
It won the Special Prize of the Jury at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1974 and was an Official Selection at the 1974 New York Film Festival. Marilù Parolini worked as the set photographer.
The film begins with Julie sitting on a park bench reading a book of magic spells when a woman (Céline) walks past, and begins dropping (à la Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit) various possessions. Julie begins picking them up, and tries to follow Céline around Paris, sometimes at a great pace (for instance, sprinting up Montmartre to keep pace with Céline's tram). After adventures following Céline around the Parisian streets — at one point it looks as if they have gone their separate ways, never to meet up again — Céline finally decides to move in with Julie. There are incidents of identity swapping, with Céline pretending to be Julie to meet the latter's childhood sweetheart, for example, and Julie attempting to fill in for Céline at a cabaret audition.
The second half of the film centers around the duo's individual visits to 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes, the address of a mansion in a quiet, walled off grounds in Paris. While seemingly empty and closed in the present day, the house is yet where Céline realizes she knows as the place where she works as a nanny for a family — two jealous sisters, one widower, and a sickly child. Soon, a repetitive pattern emerges: Céline or Julie enters the house, disappears for a time, and then is suddenly ejected by unseen hands back to present day Paris later that same day. Each time either Céline or Julie is exhausted, having forgotten everything that has happened during their time in the house. However, each time upon returning via a taxi the women discover a candy mysteriously lodged in their mouth. It seems to be important, so each makes sure to carefully save the candy. At one point, they realize that the candy is a key to the other place and time; sucking on the sweet transports them back to the house's alternate reality (in this case a double reference to both Lewis Carroll and to Marcel Proust's madeleine) of the day's events.
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